ABSTRACT
Team-building sessions are, with good reason, among the most commonly used interventions in the repertoire of any organization development (OD) consultant. Aimed at improving teamwork by directly confronting problems, these intense, relatively short meetings are often conducted off-site at the beginning of an OD project to clear the air, demonstrate the efficiency of open communication, and given team members a fresh start at dealing with the organization’s problems—a use to which they are eminently suited. Team-building meetings, however, are almost never in themselves an adequate solution for those problems; to ensure that team members fulfill the commitments they make at the team-building session and practice the new patterns of communication they have learned, there must be some follow-up activities, In fact, numerous scholars have pointed out that without such follow-up, team members suffer from regression or fadeout after they return from an off-site team-building meeting (Beer, 1980; Boss, 1989; Blake and Mouton, 1979; Cooper, 1971; Cummings and Huse, 1989; Dyer, 1987; Golembiewski et al., 1974; Kahn, 1974). After a few weeks of trusting and cooperative behavior, their interactions begin to slip back into the old patterns because some of the problems identified at the outset may never have been resolved, and in the interim others have developed.
